Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chips 200
valamaldoran writes "Looks like organic computers aren't too far off. Live Science has an interesting article about fusing brain neurons with silicon chips. From the article: 'The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.'"
Better than quantum? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Better than DRM? (Score:2)
(Yes, this is karma whoring, slamming the ??IA by responding to the first post, and just being a general anti-corporate jackass, but I don't give a shit. I couldn't see them trying to pull it off tomorrow, or even this year, but ten or so years down the road, it woul
Re:Better than DRM? (Score:2)
20 years ago we would have had lynch mobs if the RIAA tried to lock an LP to a particular turntable.
20 years ago we would have had lynch mobs if we had to repurchase all our cassette tapes because our player broke and we had to buy a new one.
Think about it.
Re:Better than DRM? (Score:2, Insightful)
20 years ago the RIAA coerced the government into taxing blank tapes, because that was the most sophisticated copy protection they had at their disposal. No one rioted. There were no "lynchings" to speak of. People bent over and took it. Some even said it was fair (not me.)
2X years later, more sophisticated tech in "experiencing" music leads to a higher bar of tolerance by the average person in accepting these copy-protection methods. DRM gets implemented, most pe
Re:Better than DRM? (Score:2)
Now look where we are.
40 years ago, people would have bitched horribly about the cassette tax, because you were essentially being fined for something illegal that it was simply possible for you to do.
20 years ago people weren't less docile than they are now. I never c
Re:Better than quantum? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there are a few different approaches that could achieve machine intelligence, but we really haven't answered some key questions before we take such chances:
Anime studies some of those ideas, but I
Re:Better than quantum? (Score:2)
As for moral issues, it would be a problem if they were created with the ability to feel pain/unhappiness/etc and forced into being slaves, but if they were only programmed to want to do those things... no problem.
The "so man
Re:Better than quantum? (Score:2)
Quantum processors work using probability and super positions.
They're two entirely different technologies and cant really be compared. Neither in the complexity of there algorithms or there speeds in various situations.
It should be noted that Quantum processors arnt very fast unless they are doing very specific tasks like cryptography. Unless someone comes up with more for the qubits to do they will never become anything more than a co
Re:Better than quantum? (Score:2)
Okay, repeat after me: "Quantum computers are likely only fast for a small subset of hard problems."
There are only
1) Factorisation
2) Discrete logarithms
3) Quantum simulation
And we're not sure if those problems are actually outside P. So, Quantum Computers are not the computational power houses that everyone who watches Discovery Channel things they are. In most cases, they are no better than a classical c
Re:Better than quantum? (Score:2)
Now when you've replaced all of them, you copy the artificial neuron's configuration to a powerfull computer, programmed to simulate the neuron net.
I find this an intresting thought experiment. Would this person be the same before and after the replacement
Re:Better than quantum? (Score:2)
hippocampus chips (Score:2, Interesting)
Neurochips will replace up to 10,000 neurons in brains damaged by Alzheimer's and stroke: One day, a computer chip may do some of the work of a damaged hippocampus. check out Dr. Theodore W. Berger, University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
the brain has billions of neurons, so this will still be small scale...
Re:hippocampus chips (Score:1)
Re:hippocampus chips (Score:2)
Think locally (Score:3, Insightful)
We have yet to succeed except in a few lab experiments in regrowing neural tissue. Stem cells might help, but then again might not. Any means to reconnect damaged neurons could have p
Re:Think locally (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
I think you're on your own there kiddo.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because we can "read" the letters doesn't mean we know what's written. Just because we can pump electricity into nerve cells doesn't mean we understand how they "think". It's still a long, long road to cyberpunk.
Well, at least the technology aspect of this flavor of SciFi. The social aspect is almost achived.
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:3, Interesting)
We can simulate the weather knowing only simple gas laws.
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have any 'simple laws' that can quickly and accurately simulate even thousands of neurons all working in parallel, then my simulations predict you're going to get very rich, or at least become famous in the scientific community =p
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:2)
Wouldn't this effectively be psychology?
Psychology seems to be to the study of individual neurons what meteorology and weather prediction is to the study of gases and molecular chemical interactions.
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:2)
Large scale is easy (Score:3, Insightful)
On a smaller scale, you're far harder pressed. Weather is pretty well predictable on a large scale. It's still near impossible on small scales. How is the weather going to be in Hicksville in 15 days? It's near impossible to tell that, while it's easy to say that within the next
Re:Large scale is easy (Score:2)
From the very little I understand about the state of cybernetics, creating neural interfaces is not about making a device that can be implanted into the brain/nervous system/etc and work right out of the box. It takes a little bit of training on both ends: the machinery learns some basic communication with the neurons by learning the patterns o
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:2)
There's lots of things we can 'simulate', but 'approximate' is a better term.
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because we can pump electricity into nerve cells doesn't mean we understand how they "think".
I'm not sure that matters.
For neural interfaces to control prostheses, we don't necessarily have to understand how the brain functions, exactly, because one thing we do know about the brain is that it can learn. People with brain damage can often learn to compensate, performing the necessary processing with different parts of the brain. Given that, it will likely be enough to create the connections, then
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:2)
A jack to the brain might come into existance, but you'll have to learn how to use it. Once the brain knows how to tap into the stored information, it will accept a standardized interface. What remains
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:2)
What remains to be seen is whether learning to interface is faster than actually learning the subject.
Not that I really know anything about any of this, but I'll be surprised if it is. I can see a neural interface being a faster and more convenient way to retrieve facts that you didn't know, but I expect the process of integrating facts to create knowledge and draw conclusions to be unchanged.
Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book (Score:2)
The brain's structure is not defined at birth, it develops based on usage and adapts to problems early in life, so if you insert something early enough it can become a functional part of the brain and perhaps even have the brain adapt to use it.
It's still a pretty dicey concept (they've mainly been using it to restore some motor function or add new senses to lab animals) but it has some pretty so
The first chapter of this book already written? (Score:2)
I remember watching a show on the discovery channel back in 2004, which showcased a paraplegic using a wireless brain implant as a mouse for a computer, and showcasing the research of Japanese scientists which were working on mapping brain signals, as to how memory is stored and retrieved, endeavo
Downloading the drivers (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:2)
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't restricted to behaviour. With practise over the past years, I've gained control of muscles in my face that other people don't even know exist; I find it fun to twitch them and distract people. People who split their tongues as body modification can, with practise, control both tips independently, even though the tongue is hardly designed for it; the muscle is there, and with the cut the movements change.
I very much doubt we need gene modification to control this. While it will of course be hard at first to activate the right neurons, in the same way that most people don't know how to twitch the right muscles to wiggle their ears, tic their cheeks (even though I can tic my left cheek easily, I don't yet have the fine control of my right, though from knowing that I was formerly unable to tic either and can now tic the left one under full control, I have no doubt that the right one will come with practise), or pull the really difficult one that moves the scalp back and forth, they all have the muscles there, they all have the neurons there to do it. Hook the chip up to an interface, then do random things like think about chocolate, wiggle your toes, try to talk in French; when you find something that triggers the chip, you'll be able to practise that trigger and eventually disassociate it from the chocolate/toes/translation to become a simple signal-to-chip.
Watch a pro musician or even a pro gamer play, or a fast typer type. There isn't a conscious decision to play that note or press that key; it's too fast for that. It's something that's practised enough, and it's instinctive and automatic.
Just needs practise.
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:2)
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:2)
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:2)
If science were to look at a wood screw, it would explain the dimentions and construction of it, and attempt to make guesses about the use of the device. Religion would be more c
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:2)
Well I'm not sure if it's instinct, but it is not waiting for feedback. When I type, it's basicly pipelined, I don't need to see the keys, I don't have to wait for the screen to respond. I could type this blind and still do at least 98% correct. Same with music once you sta
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:2)
I saw evidence of this in my typing the other day when setting up my new KVM's OSD, so it would show the machine name when I switched to it. As I was typing "ATHLON", I watched the letters on the screen appear "ATAHTLHLONON"! The KVM recorded a "keypress" based on just a "key-down" or "key-up", not a "key-down/key-up" pair. (Although then I typed slower, and saw that it would merge a "k
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply put, if the nerves from the brain to allow a muscle to do a specific movement do not exist, no amount of practice is going to help let you make that movement.
Rolling tongues, as a concrete example, is something that some pe
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:2)
The only question will mapquest or google maps be better from a neuro-heuristic perspective which will the monkies use ADVERTISERS NEED TO KNOW!
Re:"Practise" (Score:2)
'Practise' is a verb.
'Practice' is a noun.
So "With practise over the past years, I've gained control of muscles in my face...." is grammatically incorrect, while "a musician gets better as they practise and worse if they don't" is correct.
Having said that, I'm Canadian, which uses a wierd hybrid of British and American English, with both parents being British. This rule could well be from the British side (in fact, I think it is) and any American is going to rea
Re:"Practise" (Score:2)
Just joshing with ya man (Score:2)
Re:Downloading the drivers (Score:2)
Since when does the "device driver" dictate the API for the O/S? The trick is figuring out the undocumented API that the implanted chip driver needs to implement. If there is such an API for the calcium pump computer that is typing this post then a metaphoric "pearl forming around a piece of grit" is a very real possibility.
"If we just drop in a a
This seems familiar (Score:2)
Re:This seems familiar (Score:2)
The word you're looking for is 'futile'. Hand in your geek card :-)
The Borg were great, until that Species 8472 business. We've seen how these guys can adapt their equipment to anything they come up against, and how they can extrapolate countless potential applications from a single example of a new technology - look what they made of the Doctor's holographic emitte
Re:This seems familiar (Score:2)
To resist it is useless [lyrics007.com]
Re:This seems familiar (Score:2)
Damn you Douglas Adams, and your witty guide.
The Borg were great until Voyager really. Species 8472 was just the beginning. The borg episodes are full of plotholes in voyager. For instance, the episode where seven of boobs^H^H^H^H^H nine rejoins the collective as an individual, and the voyager crew saves her. Meh, I guess voyager was just full of plotholes. In fact, how many shu
Big Question Is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Big Question Is... (Score:2)
Re:Big Question Is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Big Question Is... (Score:2)
Don't know why I didn't think of it myself....
I guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I guess... (Score:2)
Then you would have The Terminal Man [allscifi.com].
Re:I guess... (Score:2, Funny)
I don't think I would be using Microsoft Windows Seizure Edition.
Wow, what beautiful blue sky - Those dumb forecasters got it wrong ag......Bzzzzzt...bzzzzt..Aaaagh!
man woman (Score:2, Funny)
Singularity! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Singularity! - mod parent up (Score:2)
If you're looking for a good book that deals with cyberpunk, the Singularity, and transhumanism, I highly recommend Accelerando [accelerando.org] by Charles Stross. Note: It's a very post-modern, post-millennial, post-cyber kind of b
Oh, great, a computer with headaches! (Score:5, Funny)
a. Shut down some applications.
b. Let me sleep for a while and get back to you.
c. Get me some Aspirin already!"
Re:Oh, great, a computer with headaches! (Score:2)
I imagine... (Score:3, Funny)
=|
A little FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
In the book Memory (by Lois McMaster Bujold) we see a man with an "eidetic memory chip" in his head. Technology is far along advanced that this effectively is a huge hard drive, giving this man perfect memory of everything for the 20 years or so that he's had it in. He's then hit by something which screws up the chip in his head; and since his brain has come to rely on it as memory storage, he starts getting scrambled memories, and acts as if they were real, losing touch with reality.
I know it's a long way off and a bit extreme... but we can only hope that the early adopters will have some protection against failure and/or bugs and/or malice.
Re:A little FUD (Score:2)
And how is this different from damage to organic brain? People with brain damage can behave also pretty weird, have all kinds of hallucinations or weird perception distortions like being unable to percept one side (left or right depending on the placement of damage).
I would be more afraid
Re:A little FUD (Score:2)
Mandatory Post (Score:4, Funny)
Would you do it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The question:
Would you get yourself a neural jack and hook up?
I wouldn't.
Re:Would you do it? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would because it is the only realistic way that my mind can survive longer than my body. I don't think it has to be as bad as the picture you paint. Many people use limited neural implants now: cochlear implants. Even today we have people who spend too much time with technology at the expense of their health. Regardless of the type of interface in use I believe we will remain essentially the same.
Re:Would you do it? (Score:2)
Re:Would you do it? (Score:2)
Re:Would you do it? (Score:2)
Depends on how old you are. I am 40, most of the men in my family die between 60 and 70. Twenty years is not long at all in medical science. And you still need to allocate 10 or 20 years to bring a product to market.
When I graduated some friends of mine went into medical science, and I went into aerospace. 15 years later they are restarting their careers outside their original field.
The big difference is pay: people working in research get paid less, consequently sci
Re:Would you do it? (Score:2)
I'd be affraid of my mind going insane without the rest of me to keep it in check. With my abilities I could be one of those cyberpunk criminals with all sorts of implants and enhancements. I'd let it happen if I weren't affraid of the consequences. But by then maybe that won't matter to me anymore. The world would be so different, maybe I would
Gibson Had It Right (Score:2)
Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space, a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.
"Larry, you in, man?" She positioned herself in front of him. The boy's eyes focused. He sat up in the chair and pried a bright magenta splinter from his socket with a dirty thumbnail.
Great (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:2)
Ten things to expect from Microsoft Brains (Score:5, Funny)
2. It will only think one thought at a time, unless you buy MS Brain Enterprise Server
3. Sometimes, it will stop thinking. The human will need to be killed and brought back with the paddles. This will be considered normal.
4. Windows software will suddenly make sense.
5. All your thoughts will be covered under DRM. You can share thoughts with up to three other people, but only if you are in a connected wireless area and your thoughts can register their new owners.
6. You may live longer, but large parts of your life will be spent watching a blue bar slowly crawl across your field of vision.
7. All sex will be done by oblique references. Nudity will not exist in any form other than pixilated and blurred images.
8. There will be Open Source brains -- called "Open Minds" but the people who choose them will be considered insane and untrusted by the rest of the MS Brain using world. These people will be locked away in insane asylums.
9. There will be Apple OS-X brains. The people who choose this will be seen as misguided flower children, wandering in airports with be smiles and preaching their message of peace and good music. They will be largely ignored.
10. There will be <>(@!*@($&&) * [[<< 0x000000BE or ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY >>]]
For a more on the subject (Score:4, Interesting)
use the machine, but trust your ghost. (Score:2)
There are many copies ... (Score:2)
Good tag word? (Score:2)
And implants for healthy people? (Score:2)
Ob Dune (Score:2)
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind," Paul quoted.
"Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said.
Re:Neurotransmitters (Score:4, Informative)
Membrane potentials (literally voltages measurable from one side of a membrane to another) can tell you what is going on in a neuron. In fact there are so many electrical signals inside a brain that a simple device like an EEG can tell you quite a bit about what is going on.
Re:Neurotransmitters (Score:2)
You have a pretty good posting history for a flatline.
Re:Neurotransmitters (Score:2)
I don't know, I have never seen it expressed that way. I have seen EEG's (including my own).
I believe that personality, behavior and memory are all the same things in the brain: connections between neurons. Its not a computer with separate logic and storage.
If your temporal lobe is behaving strangely then this may be reflected in different ways.
I took medication for my seizure disor
Re:Not correct (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not correct (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not correct (Score:2)
1. Unless, (as Roger Penrose suggests), "mind" is somehow non-deterministic, "Learning through trial and error" could one day be described with mathematics. Even if it is non-deterministic we could still resort to statistics (as demonstrated by QM).
2. The system of axioms that are the foundation of the extrodinary "power of prediction" found in mathematics is somhow deeply related to the data collection and predictive capabilities the mind/body needs to catch a ball.
Re:Not correct (Score:2)
I think you mean that complex math is used to *simulate* catching a ball thrown at someone. Ever calulate the surface area of a potatoe? That's calculus too... but it doesn't mean the potatoe used caclulus to know how to grow to its final state.
Re:Not correct (Score:3, Informative)
Children learn to catch a ball through trial and error, over time they notice what they need to do to succeed. It's not calculus, it's just that experience allows them to predict where the ball will end up. They aren't doing calculations they have just seen enough balls thrown to be able to make a prediction because they have seen how a ball travels when thrown. Just like children learn that screaming gets the TV to display their favourite show, and that flipping the light switch makes the
Re:Not correct (Score:2)
You can build a machine that will balance itself on 2 wheels using a feedback control system, and it's similar to how we learn how to stand up on our own. The control system engineer has to "teach" the machine how to control itself by tuning parameters like P, I,
Re:Intelligence is relative (Score:2)
The problem is that intelligence is relative to the situation.
If you put a rocket scientist on a desert island with a native he might look foolish to native in simple acts of finding something to eat. And vice versa if you put the native and the scientist into the lab... Well I'm not sure what the native is going to do except enjoy the free coffee and watch the man in the magic box.
However, if you put the native and rocket
Re:1 million retarded people... (Score:2)
More like "LOTTERY TICKETS?! I CAN'T LOSE!!"
Re:Hello PETCO (Score:2)